Mechanic
by Radie
Summary: Never come between a man and his scattered assortment of mechanical parts he pulled out of a trash bin. Just saying.


Without his skates, Corn was still tall. Without that silly hat, he still looked like a dork. Weaving his long fingers through his mess of blond hair, he stared intently at the hunk of metal in front of him, chapped lips curled into a twisted snarl of frustration as he threw down the wrench with a single, high pitched shriek of, "Oh, fuckin'_-A_!"

Gum couldn't help but look up from her magazine, popping the gum in her mouth as she watched him from her perch on the couch. He was staring at the junked bot he had snatched from the garbage like it had offended him somehow, oil seeping out of a crack in the plating along its front. Nuts, bolts, circuits, and wires were piled beside him like a steel salad, partially burying a series of tools he had stolen from a local hardware store to finish this job. Of course, in the middle of this mess was Corn himself, shirt stained with a variety of fluids ranging from petrol to sweat to blood. His hand was cupped around his mouth, his brows knit together so tightly that they almost seemed to fuse over the bridge of his nose.

There was an awkward silence, him stewing in his frustration and her just trying to figure out what she could say that _wouldn't_ start a fight. Corn was always so touchy about mechanics; it was his hidden talent, his one skill that might land him an actual _job_ once he outgrew this whole "street culture" thing, and he took it far more seriously than he did his graffiti or his skating. That was saying a lot, because his life depended on those two things at the moment.

She could recall when they brought that junked-up El Camino into the Garage. For weeks, he had put off anything GG related to fawn over it like a concerned father, tinkering with it endlessly until the fateful day when she heard the engine rev from the other end of the hideout. Of course he couldn't drive it because the tires were flat and the chassis was warped, but the fact he had caused the clunker to _start_ had been reason enough for him to celebrate for weeks. That was to say _nothing_ about the absolute joy he felt when he got the Honda Prelude to work, because he actually made that one usable.

He looked up from behind his golden locks, eyes narrowing as he grumbled, "What are you staring at?"

She blew a bubble and shrugged. Raising an eyebrow, she slowly responded, "I'm watching you work your magic, bro."

It was obvious that he took it as sarcasm, and the tension of an impending argument filled the air. She attempted to diffuse it by turning back to her magazine, turning the page and letting out a girlish giggle. Before he even had the chance to start up about her choice of tone, she gleefully announced, "Apparently, Spiral cut a deal with Lip Bombers. They gotta new bubblegum flavored lip gloss that's supposed to be kickin' rad, but you can't buy anywhere else. There's a Spiral on Dogenzaka, isn't there? Maybe I should go by later today."

He turned away from her with a sigh, turning his attention back to the scrap heap he had dragged in. It wasn't a car, that was for damn sure. She hadn't known _what_ the mangled mess was when he first pulled it in, stuffed in a trashcan that _luckily_ had wheels. According to him, it was something that the Rokkaku Corporation had tossed in the dumpster, and since it looked "fishy," he wanted to figure out just what kind of contraption it was. It took a couple of days for him to figure out which parts went where, but in the end he had managed to piece the metal together to form something resembling a human. Sort of.

Clawed hands, feet like roller blades, stocky body, nonexistent head...

Well, it had a vaguely human shape, at the very least. It even seemed to have something resembling a face, with glass sensors that looked like bright orange eyes.

"Don't get so discouraged," she finally sighed, twirling her finger in her sandy hair. "It's not a car. It's not the pinball machine. We don't know what the damn thing is."

"A robot," he replied bluntly.

"Well, yeah. I can see that, but I don't _think_ you've ever worked on a robot before."

"Er, well... _no,_" he drawled in response, digging around the piles of scrap for a screwdriver. "I think the closest I ever got to that was, you know, fixin' the neighbor kid's remote control dinosaur when I was twelve. This is a bit more complicated than a velociraptor with a borked joint, and I know that, but I'll be _damned_ if it ain't frustratin' as all _fuck_ to not have a clue what to do. You know what I'm sayin'?"

She closed her magazine and pitched it aside. No, she couldn't claim to know what it was like to be frustrated about not being able to fix something. She had figured out she wasn't a "handiwoman" years ago. Besides, that wasn't exactly her job, now was it? She was an expert at _breaking_ things-guard rails, signs, outdoor displays, and the heart of just about every male Rudie from Kibogaoka Hill to Highway Zero-but repairs were Corn's job. He basically fixed up and maintained everything in the Garage right down to her skates. That's why he was the boss.

However, she could see why he would be so upset about it. Corn was something one would call a _genius_. As much of a fuck-up he was in the eyes of society, she could safely say she had never met anyone half as smart as him in her entire life. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that his mood was less about him having trouble with the robot, and more along the line of being frustrated because he finally knew what it was like not to know something.

She stood, stretched, and slowly approached him as he finally rummaged up the screwdriver from the clutter and dove back into the mess of oil and wiring head-first. He didn't notice her lean over him until her arms were draped around his shoulders, her lowering her head down next to his own and whispering, "Maybe you need to check the batteries."

Brown eyes slowly shifted to look at her, and fingers came up to push his hair behind his ear. Corn scowled at her, obviously not amused as he growled, "Robots don't use batteries."

"How do you know?"

"I know because I don't think the Rokkaku dudes are dumb enough to build something this _revolutionary_, and then have its functions dependent on a pair of double As."

Gum shrugged, raising up just enough to rest her chin on the top of his head, tightening her hold around his shoulders in something that could have been seen as a loving embrace. That is, if Corn wasn't so rigid and glaring at the ground with such intensity that, if looks could kill, the Garage would have burst into flames. She snorted a laugh and rocked side to side, making him reluctantly sway with her as she sang, "I think that you need to get away from that thing."

"Why?"

She sniffed his hair and gagged in fake disgust, taunting, "Because you smell like jockstrap and motor oil."

"Charming."

With that, Corn simply dropped his tools and waved his hands dismissively at the hunk-of-junk in a silent signal that he was done for the day. Gum let go of him with a squeal of joy and backed away as he clambered to his feet with a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes. For once, he was going to listen to her! Finally, after days of doing nothing but sitting in the Garage and listening to him bitch, he was going to listen to her!

"Yeah, let's hit Dogenzaka and look for that lip gloss of yours or something," he groaned, popping his back and tying his jacket around his waist. "I can't take this shit anymore. I'm done. I'll fool with it later."

As he sat back down to put his skates back on, Gum circled him and plopped on the floor next to him. He paused and looked at her dumbly, the two sitting in silence for a while before he finally rolled his finger in the air to urge her to speak.

"Oh!" she piped. "I was just going to ask you what you were gonna do with that thing when you figure out how to fix it."

He smiled; obviously he was touched by the fact she used the word "when" and not "if." However, he didn't immediately respond. Instead, he fell unusually quiet, looking off into space as though trying to pull an answer out of thin air. He had mentioned once before that he wanted to know why the Rokkaku Corporation built it, and why it was scrapped. Maybe he was planning to use it _against_ Rokkaku? That would be pretty rad, almost like a plot yoinked from an action movie.

"You know," he sighed, "I never thought about it beyond figurin' out its function. But with how much that damn thing's been pissin' me off, I think I'mma give it a shit job. Swear to god, when I get it fixed I'm gonna make it train noobs. Fuck, I'll give it the worst name I can for good measure. Like... shit. I dunno. Billy Bot or Roboy or something. After all this? I want it to have a complex."

Gum's smile fell as she grumbled the words, "Well, that's anti-climactic."

He pulled on his left roller blade and tightened the strap before snapping it shut, rising to his feet with a groan as he fished his hat out of his back pocket. Placing it on his head, he offered her a shrug in response.

"Sorry to burst your bubble, chick. But who knows? Maybe something more exciting than a broken robot'll come up."


End file.
